Renegade Kingdom Prologue

PART 1



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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
— Sara Teasdale
There Will Come Soft Rains








GEO

October 5, 2089

“Oh, come here, dear, come see what’s on TV!”
The TV: what was once the shining example of human progress is now (or always has been, depending on one’s perspective) an esoteric weapon of surveillance made to fuel the information economy and distract from truth. Ours sits nestled in the cramped front room among packed cardboard boxes sprawled shambolically across the small space—preparation for better days. Despite our precocious optimism, the faux wood blinds have been twisted shut. The flimsy slats layer seamlessly to form our protective barrier from the eyes of the Regime, plunging our home into a gloomy umbra.
I brave the dark maze that is our makeshift living room as I approach the junkyard sofa standing a mere three meters from the screen. The TV display exhales a hazy glow like a puff of breath amid cold air, illuminating my path as I shuffle deftly between scattered items—an old hairbrush, a loose argyle sock, and for God’s sakes, a book (“Jesus, Amanda, we can’t have something like this out in the open! Not yet, at least,” I exclaim in a low whisper, waving the contraband shakenly in my iron grip, making sure to turn my back to the television). Suddenly, my mind catches up to the present moment, and I begin to gather the scene that must be playing out on the face of the tube. Because today is October 5th, the final day of the impossible trial. The trial that never could be, if not for the faithful army of youth residing heroically over those wooden lecterns, bending reality itself so as to rewrite history. Or rather, to restore it.
A glimmer of hope bursts into a powerful flame in my chest. Then: adrenaline. Firing through my entire beaten body, feeding my bloodstream and sending my heart into a series of frenzied pulsations: the thought of victory against the Corporate Regime, but also the realization of the sacrifices that must be made in order to achieve it.
But Amanda is smiling. Why is she smiling? Having interrupted our little rendezvous weeks prior, Amanda had been adamant in expressing her utter disapproval of my aiding and abetting a bunch of kids attempting to overthrow the government. When she (completely against my best efforts) finally discovered what they simply had to do, well, she was furious. In fact, she threatened to sell me out to our local police gang herself, meaning I really had decimated her final straw.
I perch upon the ragtag love seat beside my beautiful wife. Well, sort-of wife. Would-be wife, had the wedding not been interrupted back in May of ‘68 on the day that felt like the end of everything and the beginning of perpetual nothing.
Amanda’s thick goldish-brown hair is fading to gray. Hues of dark amber shine through in sporadic patches all the way down past her shoulders, highlights of youth never quite paling. They persist like her spirit in the face of injustice, perhaps simply out of spite for the restrictions imposed by age. A thin slice of sunlight seeps through a miniscule gap in the shades behind her, framing the crown of her head in a halo of light. Her eyes, still fixed on the monitor, are a piercing tone of celadon, flecks of jade surrounding the irises as if they were personally painted on.
She’s wearing Y brand clothing: a T-shirt and loose pants made of lightweight high-tech and whatever else nonsense material, practically government-issued, another aspect of the post-“revolutionary” zeitgeist of the past two decades. The pounding of my heart increases as I imagine, feel, taste the day that truth prevails over authority, freedom reigns just like it did not so long ago, and these damned dress codes can descend back to Hell where they belong.
The spongy couch cushions sink wearily below our collective weight, and I reach out involuntarily for her hand. Finally, I glance at the screen. And there, in our little abandoned shack—a minor upgrade from apocalyptic bunker—I may well be floating on air, the rest of this godforsaken world fading away all around me. One more time, my mind whispers, one more redo. This time, we’ll get it right.
And in the background, somewhere among the shadows and the decades of whispers and fear almost left behind us for good, I hear Amanda’s voice, full of the same pride I feel swelling within me: “They did it. They actually did it.” And if there’s a minute hint of fear, of too-good-to-be-trueness buried somewhere in her tone, then who’s really to say?
The fire rages on the screen. Seven heroes, emerging from the chaos. Someone’s dead. Then, blackness.
Reflected in the sudden nothingness of the screen is my image, hunched over and completely enthralled, palms clasped apprehensively upon my lap—I must have released Amanda’s hand at some point during the broadcast. The face looking back at me is a pale vehicle for rivers of creases and grooves; my time on the run has left behind the physical imprint of stress, stress being the same culprit for my thinning hair. Once a vibrant ginger, it’s now evanescing to a strawberry blonde. Blades of meek facial hair have sprouted to form the beginnings of a prickly beard in the same feeble tinge. My bulky figure next to that of Amanda’s is completely still, as if Regime Agents might spring out from unnoticed foxholes at the slightest detection of movement.
For a while, there’s silence between us, a shocked sort of disbelief. The image of Velvette Yarden, daughter of the king and leader of the new age, reappears in my mind. Her enraged stare, the fury in her movements even so weighed down by the burden she’ll surely carry for the rest of her life. And that iconic scar below her eye, permanently burned into flesh, an irreparable sign of her humanity. Somewhere deep behind those clear stony eyes still lies that goody-two-shoes little redhead girl who I knew mere years ago, as lost as anyone, and how couldn’t you be in a kingdom that large and in a world submerged so deeply beneath the shame of its Icarian leaders?
I remember the last words I spoke to her, ones I knew she’d told herself long ago, but I’d said them anyway, lest she know where I stand—something about embracing the unknown.
With the total darkness of the TV screen and the drowning-out of nearly all light from outside, I’m left to wonder where those kids could be now, for the mystifying gyre of life never stops, especially not anymore.


















VELVETTE

August 17, 2089

“Turn the wheel! Velvette—turn—the damn—WHEEL!!!”
Flashes of greenery and loosened pebbles scatter the outer surface of the ancient station wagon’s safety glass windshield, a relic from pre-Revolutionary times incidentally named Alejandro. He rumbles on through the trenches of overgrown vegetation before plunging into a wide but shallow bayou of neon blue liquid.
We all duck for cover beneath the protection of arms over heads as Alejandro collides with a mountain of peat. An honorable final act, I silently decree as smoke rises from his crumpled hood and his wheels dig themselves deeper into the bog like quicksand. For when I turn my head to gaze out of the rear windshield, it’s to see our pursuers drenched in luminous cerulean serum. Forced to exit their electromagnetic vehicles as the underground neodymium grid came to an end at the outskirts of Geronto, the agents had been right on our tail and fully exposed as we prepared for impact. My palm tightens under the grip of a hopeful hand grasping mine, no doubt in response to the scene unfurling just beyond the tail end of our loyal vehicle, so far playing out exactly according to plan.
Then: car doors slamming. My friends surrendering themselves one by one, kneeling with hands behind heads now, knees sinking into the greedy mud. I kneel alongside them, allowing the mire to stain and seep into my clothes, grounding and real. The sky is pale blue, pleasantly cloudy. You know you’re really in it when just witnessing the weather is a special occasion, no colossal screens or billboards there to obscure your vision. However, such a privilege comes with its downsides: I wish I could blur the sight of my father’s best man’s pig-like features as he crosses his arms in satisfaction while my own are bound behind my back.
Agent Mells smirks triumphantly as he sings out our sentences, “Velvette Yarden, Maeve Rawlins, Elvira Tudor, Alaric Dunne, Hobie Barron, you are under arrest for treason, sedition, and subversive activities against the government of the Great Avant Syndicate.”
The pronouncement is ritualistic, so that I can almost see the pompous feathered hat and medieval scroll held formally in the Agent’s grip. Then, dropping the dignified air for something more villainous: “You’ll have your trial, per our deal. We’ll be seeing you five in court in forty-eight hours.”
On-queue, the rest of the Agents bring us to our feet by a violent hold on our wrists and drag us to the thin rectangular police cars parked helter-skelter before the lip of the chemical pond, about a furlong off the shore. I’m thrown inside one of the vehicles, colliding with Maeve, and we’re suddenly surrounded by the smooth white interior of the Aspen Model Ω-turned-police car, the pretentious brand name perfectly reflecting the childlike ambitions of its creator.
On Maeve’s other side sits Alaric. He stares down at the carpeted floor, surely pondering how he managed to make it this far. Maeve’s deep brown eyes are locked on the tinted windshield, but don’t seem to see quite through it—an attempt at appearing unreadable, surely. Nevertheless, her pinkie wraps firmly around mine just past the point where our legs touch, unseen by the driver, the familiar warmth from just after the crash returning to my fingertips.
“I sure hope you kids have a plan this time.”
The even voice belongs to Agent McCarthy, his worn face and chestnut hair coming into view in the high-definition mirror as the driver’s side door slides shut without a sound. The vehicle powers on, and we lift smoothly into the air as we align with the electromagnetic grids below, identical poles deflecting each other while the car’s internal systems prepare to initiate movement.
“Destination selected: Politica Corp Courtroom, Northern Mohani location,” announces the car smoothly with a benevolent lilt, almost like a question.

The gavel slams down hard on the wooden sound block, the resulting noise reverberating throughout the spacious atrium as if electrified by the tension within. A single room encapsulating each of my enemies and that which remains of my friends—it’s nearly inconceivable that I had hardly an inkling of who these people truly were until just a few months ago, some of them having been in my company since I was born. We stand stationed at various zones within the space, and it feels like we’re models in a dollhouse or improvisers on a stage. The first trial in the history of the Great Avant Syndicate…
*Bla bla bla, dramatic stuff I’ll figure out when I get done with the rest of the story*
“Why don’t you take us back,” (someone says), “to the very beginning, then?”